‘You have to commit to it, Maya.’
Remembering
Aiji’s words made the singer bite down hard on his lollipop. Fortunately, the
sweet had only been opened recently so the sugary thing didn’t shatter under
the pressure of his teeth impacting it. She would have noticed if it had.
Miya
wasn’t sitting that far away after all, and something as awful a waste as
shattering a lollipop would not go unnoticed by her. Maya wouldn’t have been
able to stand it she started teasing him about it too. Aiji had been harping on
him a lot recently, ever since the guitarist had done the ‘mature’ thing and
his indefinable relationship with Haruki into something concrete as they
started officially dating. He’d been pestering Maya to do the same thing with
Miya for the past month or so.
But
Maya didn’t want to.
At
least, not exactly. The way he saw it was that he and Miya were everything that
they needed to be and that there was nothing good that could come of changing
it. They were far more than friends but kissing other people was still sort of
okay, so long as it was only for short bursts of fanservice. Those boundaries
meant it was good enough of a definition for Maya.
Aiji
hadn’t seen it that way however, and his pestering was starting to grate on
Maya’s already limited sanity. It had gotten so annoying that Maya had caved.
He’d actually gone out and picked up a set of couples’ rings to placate the
nosy and invasive best friend that probably was well-meaning rather than
actively trying to ruin Maya’s life.
Even
though Maya had done what he’d asked and bought
the stupid rings, Aiji was still complaining. Now it was about the fact that
Maya was keeping the box and its contents in his pocket instead of putting the
rings where they belonged. Fortunately, he wouldn’t say anything too obvious
about it while Miya was around and Miya was almost always around these days.
Even
so, something about Aiji’s words was still bothering him.
Maya
had made it perfectly clear that he intended to be performing on stage with
Aiji and Miya and Haruki for the rest of the foreseeable future. He left no
doubt in his answer to where Miya would be crashing after Lives and late nights
with him in the studio, obviously, the answer was his place. It was no secret
that Miya was the only person alive with access to his secret stash of
lollipops, nor that she would never breathe a word of the secret stash’s
location. Maya was fully committed to keeping Miya safe and healthy and happy,
and more or less entirely his, so what else did he really need to do?
At
the moment Maya was lounging with Miya underneath a streetlamp on a bench
outside the studio in the warmth of a summer night in the heart of Tokyo. They
were sitting with their legs woven together with their elbows leaned back
against opposite arms of the bench and a spread sweets and snacks between them.
Miya’s head was bobbing to the beat of the song they’d finished last week as it
boomed through the headphones hanging around her neck, her eyes closed in bliss
and the most perfect expression of happy concentration Maya could ever imagine
ghosting across her face. Maya bit down hard on his lollipop again.
The
box of rings in his pocket was suddenly burning a hole in the fabric.
Miya
had been cooing over the rings when
Haruki had shown her, and this morning she’d been girly and giddy over their
two-month official anniversary. Maya had certain she was just being all giggly
and whatnot because it made Haruki blush, but Aiji was convinced that she had
been trying to give Maya a hint. Maya scowled at the memory and twirled the
lollipop around with his tongue.
In
a quick jerk, Maya reached into his pocket and yanked out the box, throwing it
in Miya’s direction in the same motion. Her eyes had opened as the song ended
and a new one queued up so she spotted the projectile and caught it easily.
She
let go of it immediately, letting it fall into her lap as she shook out her
hand as if it had burned. She’d caught a corner on an odd angle and it had dug
into her skin. The stabbing sensation annoyed her enough to prompt her to whip
of her hat and smack Maya with it. Actually, it was Maya’s hat, but as he was
the one currently in possession of the lollipop, Miya finished beating him with
the article and tugged it back down onto her head as she complained, “That hurt,
moron.”
Maya
just grumbled.
“What
the hell is this anyway?” Miya asked, turning her attention to fiddling with
the box.
When
she got it open, she didn’t gasp or make a big fanfare of the discovery. Maya
would never have expected her to. It wasn’t Miya’s style. She wasn’t the type
to squeal or ask him to put it on her finger for her; she wasn’t even the type
to want it on her finger. Miya wasn’t really a rings person.
Miya
admired the ring for a moment, pulling hers out of the box and rolling it
around in her palm. Then she tugged at the weave of necklaces tucked under her
hoodie, pulling out a chain that she could unhook and thread through the center
of the ring. The necklace had a few other trinkets on it. Mostly, they were
other little presents from Maya, a gold-plated guitar pick from her first
concert with LM.C, a high capacity decorative memory card with the contents of LM.C
studio database. The ring settled into place next to them nicely. Miya let that
necklace hanging out in front of her hoodie’s LM.C logo so she could look down
and see it now and again.
Then,
with a conspiratorial smile, she tossed the box back to Maya.
He
grinned back at her and pulled his half of the set out. He slid it onto his
finger without hesitation, because he was
a ring person. He smirked internally and rolled the lollipop over his
tongue.
Aiji
was wrong.
Nothing
had changed. The ring hadn’t made anything different, because it didn’t need
to. Maya didn’t need to ‘commit to it’ as Aiji said. He didn’t need to commit
to an official relationship because he was already committed to her. ♡♥Finite♥♡